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It’s easy to see how Amazon.com Inc. threatens the world’s retailers. But analysts, brands and advertising agencies are waking up to the fact that a growing piece of Amazon’s business impinges on turf now controlled by two other tech titans, Google and Facebook.

A group of the world’s top technology leaders have published an open letter urging the UN to ban the use of artificial intelligence in weapons systems, amid growing concerns that autonomous killer robots could wind up taking control. The group of 116 companies, most of which specialize in robotics or AI, argued that its growing use could revolutionize modern warfare in irreversible ways and pose a danger to nation states. “Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare,” the letter states.

As the world’s most powerful computer systems begin to embrace artificial intelligence in earnest, using smart algorithms to increase efficiency and and speed, the potential damage that a “rogue” AI could cause continues to grow.

Two of the world’s most notorious “darknet” marketplaces have been knocked out in a one-two punch that officials say yielded a trove of new intelligence about drugs and weapons merchants that operate from hidden corners of the internet.

The world’s brightest laser — which is so powerful that it can produce light pulses that are 1 billion times brighter than the surface of the sun — can “transform” visible light into X-rays, making the shape and color of objects appear different, new research shows.